'Today's post goes into the global consumption of energy and
provides a dataset in Excel for researchers on global
primary energy consumption from 1830 to 2010. In other words, the
energy contained in fossil fuels, uranium, and biomass in their
raw form before processing into electricity, heat, or liquid
fuel, and direct electricity production from hydro, solar, wind,
and geothermal. The dataset, based on an assessment of seven
different data sources, shows the following:

We are now burning 10 times as much energy as a century ago
to provide the goods and services we consume.

Energy consumption is still increasing rapidly, with an
approximate 550 exajoules (523 Quadrillion BTUs) consumed at the
primary energy level in 2010.

Of this total 80% was provided by fossil fuels, 11.3% by
bio-energy mainly from wood combustion, 5.5% from nuclear, 2.2%
from hydro, and 0.4% from other renewable energy sources.

The historic time for each energy source to grow from 1 to 10
exajoules in primary energy production was 12 years for nuclear,
33 years for crude oil, 39 years for natural gas, 52 years for
coal, and 59 years for hydro-power.

A graphical depiction of the data and comparison of sources can
be found below the fold.

The charts below can be found in the Excel file, source attribution can be
found at the bottom. The data in the charts is normally displayed
in exajoules (10^18 joules) and in a few cases in Quadrillion
(10^15) BTU's for data comparison. The following conversion
factors were used:

1 joule = 9.48×10−4 BTU.

1 boe (barrel of oil equivalent) = 5.45 x 106 BTU.

1 cubic feet of natural gas = 983 BTU.

1 metric ton of coal = 22.72 * 106 BTU.

1 exajoule = 174 million barrels of oil equivalent.

A few notes on calculations made to make a data comparison:

The dataset displays primary energy for oil, gas, and coal,
as well as nuclear power. To obtain primary energy data for
nuclear power, electricity produced has been adjusted for the
efficiency losses assuming a 33% efficiency factor, as per IEA
standards.

The historic data for bio-energy from Fernandes (2007) and
Smil (2010) is calculated by estimating the average energy use
per person for a large number of countries, multiplying this
value with the population, and adjusting for other energy
sources. In this manner, a reasonable estimate can be obtained
for bio-energy consumption across historic time. Smil (2010)
covers not more than a dozen countries in this manner, while
Fernandes (2007) covers more than a hundred and is more complete
in his decadal time series.

The data for coal is normally best taken in million tonnes of
oil equivalent (mtoe) as this filters out the energy differences
between coals, as opposed to taking data in million tonnes of
coal. To convert these values to joules/btu's the lower heating
value of the coal was used. Similarly, for natural gas the values
were for BP Statistical Review (2011) converted
from cubic feet to BTUs and exajoules using lower heating values.

To convert installed solar pv, geothermal, and wind power
capacity to electricity produced, a number of conversion factors
were applied. For solar a capacity rating of 15% was assumed, for
wind a capacity rating of 23.4%, and for geothermal 90%. In case
of hydropower, no conversion efficiency loss has been applied in
the data.

The first two charts in this section display the evolution of
primary energy consumption broken down by energy sources. Figure
1 shows the evolution from 1830 to 2010 and Figure 2 from 1970 to
2010. The same is shown in Figures 3 and 4 but by the individual
curves of each energy source.

In this section, a dataset is graphically depicted wherein a
comparison is made of the number of years for each energy source
to grow from 1 exajoule to 10 exajoules of energy production. By
comparing these, it can be shown how long different energy
sources took to become influential in global energy supply.

Four charts are shown below that outline the differences between
datasets for bio-energy (biomass + biofuel), coal, natural gas,
and crude oil. The main differences in the datasets can be found
in the years after 2000 for biofuels, 1950 to 2000 for natural
gas, and 1945 to present for crude oil.